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5.23.2012

Le Mort de le Marqius de Marquis

We here at Peanuts from Heaven don't usually advocate for the French (they talk funny and haven't given us much since the Statue of Liberty, the Louisiana Purchase and Fried Potatoes) but we have to say that perhaps we underestimated the satirical French playwright Moliere whose stinging account of "The Death of the Marquis de Marquis" seems oddly prescient in light of this week's roster move.

We provide the most relevant scene below:

...Bijoux and Pyjama [a pair of young sophisticates recently arrived in a country house to woo the daughters of Ronald le Lutin [the gnome] a wealthy, and crumudgeonly, old man with a large estate] sit in a drawing room debating their situation

Bijoux: Is it just me or is this frightfully easy?Pyjama: It is indeed old friend. For those with youthful faces and adventurous spirits anything is possible.Bijoux: I feel as if I could fly above the larks and the jays, indeed, higher even than the angels, such is the love I feel for my dear Minnie.Pyjama: Though your poetry tastes of bog water, I admire your sentiment, good sir. My love for Sota is such that I would gladly battle with tigers or even wash the socks of the foulest Welsh pig butcher!

Bijoux and Pyjama mid discussion

Bijoux: My god! That is love!Pyjama: Indeed, there is only one flaw with our situation...Bijoux: Le Lutin's insistence that we grit and pluck?Pyjama: No, le Marquis de MarquisBijoux: Ah yes, the poor Marquis de Marquis.Pyjama: He is a fine man...Bijoux: Indeed, fine as a fine BordeauxPyjama: ..and a wise man...Bijoux: Indeed, as wise as a sage farmer.Pyjama: ...but...He does not belong here.Bijoux: No.Pyjama: He cannot help Minne or Sota to learn their lessons.Bijoux: No, no.Pyjama: He cannot teach Le Lutin to behave like a nobleman.Bijoux: No, no, no.Pyjama: He cannot burn with the fire of youth as we do.Bijoux: No, no, no, no, a thousand times no.Pyjama: What is there to do, Bijoux?Bijoux: Perhaps we could play a joke on him! If we pretend that he has passed away from this world and is now an etheral spectre beyond our vision and hearing, he may wander off of his own accord!Pyjama: Genius! Such chicanery is normally seen in Parisian theaters, but why not here in the country! Quiet now, here comes the Marquis!
[Le Marquis de Marquis enters, stumbling slightly, looking very shabby and totally out of place in comparison with the young men]

Man believed to be the inspiration
for Le Marquis de Marquis

Marquis: My god! What a horror! The brewers, they are revolting! My head is ringed with barrels and my barrels are headed with rings!! I don't even know what that means!! But if I keep up this charade perhaps I can keep the kind hospitality of le Lutin a little longer. [Sees Bijoux and Pyjama] Oh! There are those young men, Messieurs Bijoux and Pyjama (odd names, but good men). Gentlemen how are you!! [Bijoux and Pyjama ignore him] I say sirs! GOOD DAY!! [Walks over to them, still being ignored]Bijoux: Stop friend, I feel a wind across my cheeks that I have not sensed since le Marquis de Marquis left us.Marquis: Because I have returned!!Pyjama: I feel the same gust my friend. But surely it's our sorrow at having lost so good a man so young.Marquis: But I am found!! HERE!!Bijoux: His death was quite the shock, it reminds us to savor our successes as fleeting wisps of air in the clouds of life.Marquis: D-d-d-DEATH? MOI?! Yet here I stand! Could this be some trick,?I could push a hand against them and know for sure. But that would be rude and we French are never rude! Better to just float away, ghost that I am, for a better place. Adieu, adieu dear friends...live well and remember me!
[He is about to leave when Le Lutin enters, looking grumpy. Bijoux and Pyjama look forlorn that their ruse will be discovered]Marquis: Oh, le Lutin! How I'll miss you! Your rosy cheeks! Your stern facade!! Your incoherent mutterings about pitchers for contact! Know that, though I may be dead to you, you will always be alive to me, my chubby little Lord Dumpling!! Goodbye Goodbye! A dozen times goodbye!! [Marquis de Marquis exits and Le Lutin crosses over to a relieved looking Bijoux and Pyjama]Le Lutin: See, if you got grit you don't go crazy like that.

FIN

Put another way for those readers who don't care to read Moliere or catch the little French in-jokes here: "Adieu Jason Marquis, parting is such sweet sorrow"

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